Computers are very simple you see we take the hearts of dead stars and we flatten them into crystal chips and then we etch tiny pathways using concentrated light into the dead star crystal chips and if we etch the pathways just so we can trick the crystals into doing our thinking for us hope this clears things up.
Today in niche genres of joke that I can never get enough of and will probably still be secretly thinking about four years later
Yes. Finally someone gets it. This is one of the reasons why I fell in awe (not love) with Dune, reading it over twenty years ago while studying environmental sciences at university.
so
dune
that weird giant in the background of modern sci-fi that everyone knows about and nobody seems to get, not really
what is dune?
is it about the epynomous planet, dune, arrakis?
no
it is an epic story about paul atreides' ascent to power through the combined power of a monopoly on the supply of navigator space-cocaine and the boundless light of islam?
also no
dune is not a space opera, dune is not an epic fantasy story set in space
fundamentally dune is about ecology
and the main character of dune is not paul. nor is it leto ii. nor is it sheeana, or odrade, or miles teg, all names that mean nothing to people who only know the setting through adaptations. the main character is not even duncan idaho
it's the bene gesserit
what is the bene gesserit?
well, it's complicated. everyone knows about their "breeding program" but few people actually think about what the implications of it are
the great houses are not in charge, really. they're gene lines. they're in a very real sense different strains of *domesticated human* selected for different traits. they're not "special" for any reason of faith or exceptionalism
they're "special" in the same way a racehorse is special. because it was bred to be fast. the mythologies are all artificial additions, memetic scaffolding to surround the actual project
and then, what traits?
well, the bene gesserit sought a broad prescience. a "leader" like guidedog is a leader, leading a blind humanity through a future without hitting any metaphorical walls
they misunderstood their own mission, and they learn as much, before the end of their relevance
because paul was an ephemeral storm,
and leto is a wolf, a predator in the ecological sense, a selective pressure on the memetics of humanity, driving them out of the forest, driving them out of their spot at the top of the food chain. no longer their own worst enemy
dune is about the prelude and memetic extinction events before the scattering
it's about a domesticated humanity breaking free, becoming feral, becoming everything else
dune is about the endless struggle for humanity to find its niche before it drives itself extinct, and in doing so finding an infinite amount of niches, for an infinite amount of different humanities
it's about ecosystems and predation and diversification and extinction events both biological and memetical, and how it is ruthless, cruel, and most things go extinct without descendants, but as long as something survives it keeps going
about humanity breaking through its last great filter: itself
such is the golden path
_@ï
OOH SHELL YES
Been watching snis on snoop for a snour. Everybody do the snunky snail
https://archiveofourown.org/users/yippipieEuropean Elder Millenial Multifandom Nerdthis is my sideblog for fannish shenanigans
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